1. Sharing
The public sector is made up of many thousands of different organisations,
ranging from large departments of state to individual schools, surgeries and
libraries. Each of these organisations knows many things about its operations and
the people that it deals with. Finding ways to share or link this data together has
the potential to save time for citizens and money for taxpayers.
The UK does not have a single national identity database – and the Identity Cards
Act 2006 was repealed by the coalition government in 2011 – so it is not possible
to retrieve reference information relating to an individual citizen from a single
authoritative source. With previous generations of technology, this often meant there
was no alternative to storing multiple copies of the same data (or simply coping
without some of the data altogether). Modern technology, however, can enable
fragments of related information to be matched and linked together quickly and
non-persistently. This can be used to streamline transactions – reducing the scope for
errors and avoiding asking people to provide the same information multiple times.
The process for obtaining a UK driving licence is a good example of data
sharing in action. When you apply for a driving licence online, the Driver and
Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) requires a photograph and signature for your
new licence. If you have a UK passport then the DVLA will try to capture these
electronically from the information already held by the Identity and Passport
Service (IPS).8 This is often held up as an example of how simple changes can
deliver practical improvements for end-users.